Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg – The Threepenny Opera / The Berlin Theatre Songs

I picked this up years ago in a charity shop in Redditch, which has always struck me as rather incongruous. I don’t know what I would expect to find in Redditch, though.

It’s a box set of 1958 recordings, released in 1974, with the most 1974 cover art ever. It comes with a libretto in both German and English.

I’ve always liked the song Mack The Knife, and it’s interesting to read the lyrics in direct translation: ‘And the shark has teeth, And he wears them in his face’.

Originally produced in the Wiemar Republic in 1928, The Threepenny Opera is a critique of capitalism from a socialist perspective. Not long after, most of those involved were either in exile (like Weill and Lenya), imprisoned or killed by the Nazis. Oh well, there were very fine people on both sides, I suppose.

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